‘We have serious concerns,’ Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation chief says after meeting on Kevin O’Leary-backed AI data centre

Dozens of band members were in attendance Tuesday afternoon at the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation Community Hall, as community leaders and legal counsel hosted their first engagement session to inform residents of what the proposed Wonder Valley AI data centre campus could mean for their traditional territory.

Members said they still have many questions, and the company behind the project was not in attendance to field them.

O’Leary Digital’s proposed $70-billion, nine-gigawatt facility in the Municipal District of Greenview is roughly located 130 kilometres southwest of the SLCN reserve.

In his presentation to community members, SLCN lawyer Francco De Luca outlined the history of the project, concerns, and regulatory and consultory hurdles that the project still has to clear.

“Consultation is in place to obviously uphold the Crown’s Aboriginal treaty rights, and associated regulatory processes — whether it’s the Water Act, or the Environmental Protection Enhancement Act — they’re there for a reason,” De Luca said after the presentation in an interview, noting that those pieces of legislation are in place to protect Alberta’s water and environment.

De Luca pointed to the exemption of a provincial impact assessment and SLCN’s ongoing judicial review surrounding the project’s water license as key examples as to why he’s worried about the project.

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Heat emitted from the facility, noise, and wildlife — all topics which were also discussed during O’Leary Digital’s June open house — were all topics De Luca mentioned mentioned during the presentation.

De Luca said the proposed development, which is earmarked for about 64 square kilometres along Highway 40, is “in the heart of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation’s territory,” near where hunting and trapping takes place.

SLCN Chief Sheldon Sunshine says that as recently as early August, his family hosted a traditional camp just north of the proposed facility site. They harvested plants to use as medicine and his 12-year old grandson bagged a moose.

“That was my grandson’s first moose. For our family, that’s pretty significant,” Sunshine said, noting that other community members also use the land between the proposed site and their community.

“They’re taking that away from us, really, at the end of the day,” Sunshine said.

O’Leary Digital CEO Paul Palandjian told CBC News during an interview June 5 that the company took efforts to stay clear of any animal corridors in site planning and have a dedicated area in their site map for wildlife preservation.

“For the Indigenous communities where these are traditional lands and trap[lines], waters and hunting areas … we’ve laid out the site where there already is an existing oil and gas presence,” Palandjian said at the time.

The question and answer portion of the session was limited to SLCN-band members only. However, Sunshine told CBC News in an interview after the event that concerns were centred around the environment and lack of consultation and called it “a good conversation.”

“They just want more information to see what’s going to happen,” Sunshine said.

O’Leary Digital was originally scheduled to host an open house in conjunction with this session. 

The original July 23 date was postponed until Aug. 11. SLCN confirmed in an Aug. 10 social media post that the company would not be attending.

“We actually invited them twice to come and give this presentation and they declined, and they were supposed to be here this morning and they’re not here,” De Luca said during his presentation.

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O’Leary Digital CEO Paul Palandjian wrote in an email Aug. 11 to CBC News that his company is committed to “respectful, substantive consultation” with SLCN but there have been recent challenges.

“In the week before the meeting, circumstances changed materially, including increasingly adversarial correspondence and conduct directed at our personnel during an organized site visit,” Palandjian wrote.

Palandjian said that they felt this visit wouldn’t lead to a “constructive dialogue” and opted not to attend. He said the company hopes to meet with SLCN leadership in the near future to discuss other community engagement opportunities.

The company has not yet hosted a community event or engagement session in SLCN. 

Sunshine says he hopes that engagement does happen, noting he and his community still have many questions and worries surrounding Wonder Valley.

“We have serious concerns and we’re left to our own devices, our own assumptions,” Sunshine said.